Carbon Reduction: The United States Relies on CCS Technology

In order to actively respond to climate change and ensure the leading position of clean energy in the world, the United States attaches great importance to the development of carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) technology, and provides strong support for the capture, storage, and utilization of CCS projects, and strives to promote the safety of carbon sequestration. Sexual and feasibility studies. The government’s recently released clean coal technology report pointed out that the United States will smoothly achieve the development goals of the CCS project and the wide-scale promotion of CCS is just around the corner.

Huge capital protection technology leader

According to the latest statistics from the International Energy Agency, by 2050, the world will invest 1.3 trillion US dollars and deploy 3,400 CCS projects. The share of CCS emission reduction will reach 19%, making it the largest single technology for emission reduction. To ensure that the United States has a leading position in CCS technology, early this year, the United States established the CCS Working Group, which is jointly responsible for the Ministry of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency, to vigorously develop carbon dioxide capture, compression, transportation, and storage technologies. On August 12, the working group provided President Obama with a report on the development of clean coal projects. The report pointed out that advancing clean coal technology represented by CCS can fundamentally achieve the government's clean energy goals and provide a large number of job opportunities. Since it can play an important role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, CCS can help the United States continue to use coal and other domestic rich fossil fuels, which will help the United States maintain its global clean energy leadership.

This report, which focused on opinions from 14 federal agencies and departments and hundreds of stakeholders and CCS experts, shows that the United States is fully feasible to deploy CCS in the future, and existing technical, legal, and institutional conditions will not be a hindrance to CCS. The fundamental obstacle to development. The report emphasizes that the key to the development of CCS is to ensure the carbon trading price, a reasonable price will have a huge market driving force for the recent CCS demonstration projects, and ensure the full deployment of CCS economic benefits.

In recent years, the U.S. government has made unprecedented investments in CCS. In 2008, the U.S. Department of Energy invested nearly 500 million U.S. dollars in the development of CCS technology. In 2009, it increased to nearly 700 million U.S. dollars. The U.S. Recovery and Reinvestment Act also allocated for CCS technology. 3.4 billion U.S. dollars. According to a report of the CCS Working Group, the Ministry of Energy has so far approved nearly 4 billion U.S. dollars of state funds for use in CCS demonstration projects and attracted over 700 million U.S. dollars of private investment. These investments will allow the United States to implement extensive deployment of advanced CCS within 10 years. The project's goals lay a solid foundation. According to the plan, the United States will run 5 to 10 CCS commercial demonstration projects by 2016 and will deploy widely-accepted CCS projects in the United States in 2020.

Underground storage potential 3.5 trillion tons

The safety and reliability of underground storage of CO2 have always been controversial. The United States has conducted many years of research on the feasibility of underground storage, and has increased funding support. Through a number of demonstration projects, detailed studies have been conducted on carbon sequestration under different conditions.

On August 11th, US Secretary of Energy Zhu Xiwen announced that it will provide US$21.3 million in 3 years to fund 15 projects for the development of CO2 underground storage technology for the purpose of safely and economically storing CO2. These investments will support the development of CCS technology and infrastructure to ensure large-scale CO2 storage in different geological formations. The 15 projects selected by the Department of Energy will improve a series of key technologies and strive to solve problems including formation injection, storage capacity, and plume migration, study issues such as the isolation of leaks through rock caprocks and other mechanisms, and study the depletion of oil and gas reservoirs. Deep salt formations, non-extractable coal seams, and oil- and gas-rich shales and basalts are used in CO2 storage applications.

The U.S. Department of Energy believes that there is a huge potential for underground storage of CO2. According to the US carbon dioxide map of the United States and Canada released by the National Energy Technology Laboratory, the potential for underground storage of carbon dioxide alone reached 3.5 trillion tons, and annual emissions of 3.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide accounted for the US and Canada. The country’s strata can seal 1100 carbon dioxide emissions.

Lisa Jackson, director of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, said that the EPA is actively developing carbon storage technology, reducing the uncertainty of early projects, and improving the laws and regulations that ensure the safe and effective use of the technology. She firmly believes that once CCS technology matures, it will The United States has opened up new areas in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and creating job opportunities.

Reuse of new ways to reduce carbon

Zhu Xiwen stated that carbon dioxide capture and reuse can help effectively reduce carbon emissions in areas that are not suitable for long-term underground storage of carbon dioxide, and is an important part of CCS technology developed by the United States. In the future, a large number of fossil fuel-based power generation and other industrial projects will be implemented. This carbon dioxide capture and utilization technology will be equipped to meet the requirements of the carbon emission regulations.

In July this year, the U.S. Department of Energy announced that it will support six industrial carbon dioxide capture and conversion projects to convert industrial emissions of carbon dioxide into fuel, plastics, cement and fertilizers. These projects will receive $106 million in "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act" grants and $156 million in private investment. In the six CO2 capture and conversion projects, Alcoa used enzyme catalysts to convert the carbon dioxide produced in the smelting process into highly soluble bicarbonates and carbonates, and then used carbonate products for building fillers. Soil conditioners and green fertilizers; Novomer will develop carbon dioxide to produce polycarbonate plastic technology; Touchstone will test algae cultivation techniques that can use carbon dioxide emitted from coal to cultivate seaweeds, which in turn are converted to biofuels such as methane and other high-additions Value products; Phycal will use carbon dioxide to produce microalgae biomass fuel for power generation or processing into alternative fuels such as jet fuel and biodiesel; Skyonic and Calera will use carbon dioxide to produce carbonates to produce building materials.